6 Months In

Six months ago we arrived at the airport in Japan, spent 4 hours in the car (should have been 2 but we were hit with Tokyo traffic) driving to our hotel, spent 2 weeks in a hotel room no bigger than a large walk-in closet, shopped for appliances and household items without really knowing what we were buying due to language barriers, and walked around shell shocked for the first few months, not really knowing what had hit us.  Now, six months later, we are settled in our house, know our neighbours and a number of staff at the school, are expert bike riders, can speak a little bit of the language (well at least Carrie can) and are beginning to understand the complex culture of Japan.  These last 6 months have been full of learning and growing, but in that growth we have come to love our new life here.

Steve is really enjoying his job.  As grade 8 counselor and grade 8 English teacher (2 classes), the school has him busy.  He comes home most days not having even stopped for lunch, but he enjoys the work and so he does not mind the hectic days. The varsity tennis season at the beginning of the year made for an exceptionally busy schedule for Steve (he was assistant coach).  His learning curve has been high but I think he is getting the hang of things at work and finding each day a little easier.  Although schools are always busy places, I think next year will be much easier for him.  Steve envisions himself in this position for a long time so it must mean that he is loving it.

I was unsure how I would enjoy not working this year.  The most time I have ever had off from work was my 40-day maternity leaves.  Despite my concerns, I must say that I am really enjoying my time at home with Alyvia.  The time has really been a blessing as there has been so much to learn here. I cannot imagine having done it with both Steve and I working.  Everyday I learn something new, whether it is the language, where to shop, how to get places, or just the nuances of the Japanese culture.  There has not been a dull moment here.  In addition to taking care of the family and house, I have volunteered as Tristan’s grade 1 room mom, teach Sunday School, and organize the praise and worship music at church.   I have also been doing some subbing which has been a great way to keep my foot in the door at school.  Alyvia goes to a friend’s house when I sub, and then I look after her one year old boy when she subs. It works out well.  In order to keep my mind sane, I am doing a lot of running.  I totaled 165km in the last 30 days, with my longest run being 20km.  I have found a couple of ladies to run with which has been great for the adult socialization that I sometimes miss in not working.  Some of my time is also spent trying to learn Japanese.  I take a 2-hour class once a week and have a tutor come to my house for a couple of hours once a week. I have learned one syllabic alphabet (hiragana) and am beginning to understand the basics of a sentence.  Now I need to beef up my vocabulary to begin making gains.

Tristan is continuing to enjoy school.  He is a SOCIAL BUTTERFLY and often has trouble getting down to work, as he likes to talk.  Despite this, he is a wiz at reading and seems to understand everything he is learning.  His math homework is done with very little difficulty and he comes home talking about Beethoven, Martin Luther, King and various other people he is learning about.  Tristan participated in the school swim team for the 2 months at the start of the year and now he will be joining school gymnastics.  We have also put him in karate at the local temple.  His sensei (teacher) is an old Japanese man that does not speak English, but he is good and very serious about his art.  Tristan watches the other kids and seems to do okay.  He is enjoying it but says that they do too many drills.  This is the Japanese way! 

Alyvia is loving life and has made a few friends with some of the other staff moms that are at home right now.  She is an easy going three year old, but very independent!  There is not much that she will let me do for her.  When we get home from school, she joins her brother my taking out “her” homework and is eager to help with work around the house. She is learning her ABC’s and is trying to write her name (just lines). Her most recent accomplishment is learning to ride a 2-wheel bike with training wheels.  I have enrolled her in swimming lessons, which she just loves!  Even though the teachers speak Japanese she watches the other kids and does just fine.  The teachers are great with her.  I have also enrolled her in a Japanese modeling agency.   There is a high demand for Caucasian kids for magazines and commercials so I thought, “why not”. There are quite a number of expats who sign up their kids and the money made is always good for the university fund.

Just before the Christmas holiday we bought a car (well it is called a mini-van but it is more of a car size- everything in Japan is small!).  The vehicle seats seven, which one would never guess by looking at it from afar.  The car has really freed up my life.  I am happy if I never have to do groceries with my bike again!   We drive on the left side of the road here and so that has been something to get used to.  Every now and then I will put on the window wipers instead of the signal light. Steve and I got a GPS for Christmas and we were able to purchase Japanese maps in English.  These maps have been a lifesaver!  I could not imagine going anywhere without the GPS! 

My sister will be arriving with my 3-month old niece in 2 days.  She will be staying for 3 weeks.  2 weeks later my parents come for three weeks, and then 2 days after they leave, Steve’s mom comes for 3 weeks.  It will be nice to have the company and show people the sights here.  We have not done too much touring so by the end of the year I will have certainly seen all the highlights in the Tokyo and surrounding area.  If anyone would like to book a vacation time to Japan next year, our doors are always open.

I will end this e-mail listing a few things I have learned in the last 6 months:

1. Do not eat or drink while on the trains or buses.  This is considered rude.  In fact, eating anywhere that is not designated for eating is really frowned upon.
2. Turn your cellphone off while on public transportation.  If your phone rings you will get a few strange looks.  If you answer the phone, you will surely be the “foreigner”.
3. While riding an escalator, ride on the left side.  The right side is for people who want to pass you. (If you happen to have your chariot and decide to ride the escalator rather than the elevator, there will not bee much room for people to pass and you may annoy those in a hurry).
4. Even though Japan is one of the most populated countries in the world, it might be one of the quietest.
5. Even if a Japanese person “can” speak English, they most likely will not, even if it means not being able to communicate with you.
6. CONFORMITY!  Do not dare to be different.  The kids walking to school have the same uniforms, same school bags, and same school hats.  In order for Alyvia to join swimming lessons, she had to buy a certain swimsuit, bag, and swim cap.   Yup!  It is all about not sticking out here.
7. If you are on a bike, and do not enter a shopping parking lot at the “bike and pedestrian entrance”, you will get a stern look and wave of the arm.  ORDER!  ORDER!  ORDER!
8. Be sure you know how much you are going to pay for parking before entering the lot.  If not, you could be paying A LOT of money for a couple hour stay. 
9. Japanese must be one of the hardest languages to learn to read.  You need to know 2 syllabic alphabets with 46 sounds and another 25 blended sounds in each, and at least 2000 Chinese characters to be able to understand a sentence in Japanese.
10. Japan may be the only country where it is possible to pay up to $75 for a watermelon.
11. Who knew that counting could be so difficult.  Imagine having different words for counting money, numbers of people, numbers of food items, floor numbers, numbers of clothing items…the list goes on for awhile.
12. Nature is part of life.
13. Every job, no matter what it is, is done with enthusiasm and passion.
14. Bureaucracy takes on a whole new meaning here.  Wow!  They are efficient in some ways and so NOT in others.
15. If we miss a parcel delivery during the day, all we have to do is call the English line and have them deliver it within a 2 hour window that night.  (In Kuwait, the parcels would never get to us).

So, that is life for us so far.  We are looking forward to continues learning in the next 4 months before heading back to Canada for the summer. 

How to Deal with Garbage

Here are my experiences of how to deal with garbage in different places I have lived around the world:

Bangladesh: Throw your trash in the river, in the ditch, or in the street.  If you want to be a little more ethical about it, you can put your garbage in a garbage bag and throw the bag in the river, in the ditch, or in the street!  The garbage will then be sorted through by a resourceful few who can collect anything and make a penny off of it.

Kuwait: Throw anything you do not want in the big dumpsters outside apartment buildings.  You can throw out ANYTHING you want: toilets, couches, chairs, bookcases, even your entire house if you so desire.  If the garbage bin is not big enough, throw it beside the bin and begin a garbage pile.  Once that pile is too big, just start another one.  The cats will love you for whatever you throw in.  If you are in an area where there are no garbage bins, leave your garbage on the ground for the hired third world nationals to pick up.

Canada:  Throw your trash in a garbage bag, your bottles, cans, glass, and cardboard in a recycling bin, and put these bins on your curb on designated days for city pick up.  If your city does not have recycling pick up, bring your recycling to the nearest recycling centre.  Any big items that cannot fit in a garbage bag must be brought to the dump for a nominal fee.  You can make up this fee by bringing your cans and bottles to the bottle depot.

Japan: Purchase designated garbage bags at the local grocery store for a high fee, ensuring that you have purchased the correct coloured bag for the area you live in.  Sort your garbage according to the following parameters:
1. Plastics- anything made of plastic applies to this category- the wrapping from juice box straws, bottle caps, plastic bags, cellophane, sucker sticks etc.
2. Combustibles- these are items that can burn in an incinerator- basically food products and kleenex
3. Waste Paper - paper and cardboard-cardboard should be cut so that it is flat, including juice and milk cartons, neatly stacked, and tied with ribbon
4. Non-Combustibles: anything that does not apply to the list above-
5. Bottles and Cans- glass bottles and tin cans of any kind
6. PET bottles- these are your plastic bottles that say PET on them
7. Hazzardous waste- batteries, aerosal cans, etc.
8. Used clothes- 
9 . Big Items: Call the local garbage pick up and pay an exorbitant fee to get it picked up.  (Often times people will give away their cars as it will cost more to have someone take it away than what they car is worth).

The city will then pick up these items on designated days of the week.  For example, in our area, we have combustible pick up 2x a week, waste paper and plastic 1x a week,  non-combustibles, used clothes, hazardous waste, bottles/cans, and PET bottles every other week.

YUP!  A bit of an organizational nightmare.  I have had to write the garbage pick up schedule on my calendar and purchase enough bins to organize all the garbage.  If the garbage is not in the pre-desiganted bags, or is not sorted properly (and they will check) you are left with your garbage and a nasty note in Japanese that I am sure says, "Get your act together", or something of the sort.

Sorting household garbage is a part time job in Japan- but I guess it has to be in a country of almost 130,000,000 people.

A Man's Best Friend

 The Czech writer Milan Kundera said, "Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace."  

  If I were to introduce the words of Milan Kundera into a classroom back in Kuwait, I would be met with students passionately disagreeing.  Traditionally, in Islam, dogs are seen as impure and the phrase "the dog is a man's best friend" would be seen as pure indoctrination of the Western culture.  Over the seven years that I was in Kuwait, I did see a small shift in attitude towards dogs.  During our first stay in Kuwait in 2002, it was not uncommon for teachers to have rocks thrown at their dog by children in the street.  If a dog were to come near a child or adult, they would often run away in fear.  By 2009, I began to see more dogs on the walking paths, but even these were far and few between.  To have a dog as a pet is not common practice, and is seen as dirty by most. 

If I were to introduce the words of Milan Kundera into a Japanese classroom, the students would be whole heartily agreeing.  A dog in Japan, is a literal extension of the family.  It is more than just anthropomorphizing here;  dogs literally become "humans" to the Japanese.  A dog is treated just as well as a child, and if there is no child in the house, it replaces the child.  If you spend a couple of hours on the streets of Japan, you will quickly know what I mean.  Dogs in clothes, dogs in strollers, dogs in pet parlours,  dogs in dog bakeries, dogs in restaurants (those that permit) eating off chopsticks, and dogs shopping for luxery items to enhance their lives.  I have one friend who told me that when she first got to Japan she went out looking for diapers for her son and all she could find were dog diapers.  "It's a dog's life" takes on a whole new meaning here.

The special treatment of dogs in Japan may have its roots in the the story of "Hachiko and Eisabura";  a famous Japanese story between man and his dog.

In 1923, a yellow-coated Atika dog was born and became known as little "Hachi" (Hachiko was his formal name).  A professor named Eisabura, adopted Hachi and the two became fast friends.  Each morning the dog would accompany his master to the Shibuya train station, and each evening the dog would be waiting for Eisabura at the same spot he left.  The two continued this routine until May 1925, when Eisabura did not return from work as usual.  That day he had a suffered a stroke and died, never to return to the station.
Hachiko was given away after his master's death, but he routinely escaped, showing up again and again at his old home. After time, Hachi apparently realized that Professor Uyeno no longer lived at the house, so he went to look for his master at the train station where he had accompanied him so many times before. Each day, Hachiko waited for Eisabura to return and each day he didn't see his friend.  Soon the other train passengers realized that Hachiko waited in vigil for his dead master and they brought Hachiko treats and food to nourish him during his wait.
News of Hachiko's remarkable loyalty eventually made its way outside of Tokyo, and he became something of an iconic figure in Japan.  A statue of Hachiko forged by sculptor Ando Teru was erected at the train station in 1934, where Hachiko had been awaiting his master's return each day for nearly 10 years.  On March 8, 1935, Hachiko laid down to die in the spot where he had spent a decade waiting each day for his master to come home.

It is hard to argue that the belief that a dog is a man's best friend is western indoctrination when you hear a story like this.  On the other had, it is hard to believe that dogs (and many other animals) are being treated better than most children around the world. (I know that Japan is not the only place this is happening).  No matter what your feelings about dogs, I think we can all agree with Franklin P Jones: "Scratch a dog and you'll find a permanent job."

A Change of Season

Christmas was a season that I looked forward to as a child: snow, toboganning, ice skating, Christmas trees, decorations, the promise of Santa's visit, carols, the Christmas story, and oranges.  Oh yes, the oranges!  I can remember anxiously waiting for mandarin oranges to hit the stores and for mom to buy the first box.  We were always rationed to one a day (if we were lucky two).  If we were really lucky, mom would buy Japanese mandarin oranges rather than cheaper Chinese, and if this was the case, it was certainly only one a day!   Now, 20+ years later, I am in Japan, surrounded by mandarin orange trees.  I can literally pick them off the trees (though I have not done this as the trees are in people's private yards).  If you think the mandarins you have tried are good, you have got to try one that has not travelled thousands of miles to meet you!  Simply delicious.

Steve and I always missed a change of seasons while living in Kuwait.  The biggest season change in Kuwait is the temperature dropping to a more tolerable degree, the dust subsiding, and a few flowers appearing on some trees.  Now that we are in Japan, we realize now how much we missed having a season change.  We are into autumn, and the Japanese maples are turning a fire red, other leaves are turning yellow, and the roses are in full bloom.  I have never seen so many different kinds of roses.  Each day the oranges on the trees turn a little more orange and a few more leaves have fallen to the ground.  Although the mornings are chilly, by afternoon the sun is shining and we are running around with no jackets.  I think this might be the second best time to visit Japan (Spring being the best) for those non teacher friends planning a visit (hint hint).

Halloween

I found myself laughing as Steve and I took out Tristan and Alyvia trick or treating.  My experiences with trick or treating over the years, have all been DRASTICALLY different:

1. Trick or Treating in Canada while Living on an Acreage: In -25 degree weather, we would head out the door with our costumes shoved over our ski jackets, mittens, and toques.  We would jump in the car and proceed to be chauffeured (by our parents) to the local houses in the area.  Because of the distance between acreages, we would not hit many places, but the houses we did hit were always a score of candy, chips, and if we were lucky, pop! By the end of the night we would seek the shelter and warmth of our own homes, and count our candy.

2. Trick or Treating in Kuwait: Since the Kuwaitis do not celebrate Halloween, it was an event that the parents of AIS staff children planned with other teachers in the school.  Staff that wanted to participate in giving out treats, would put a pre-made pumpkin on their door so that the kids would know what doors to knock on.  Heading out for the night, the kids would ensure that their costumes were light weight, as to not sweat to death during the process of running door to door. In 30 plus heat, trick or treating could get a little heated. As a group, we would travel to the four teacher buildings and ride up and down the elevator, finding doors that we could knock on.  By the end of the night, we were all sweaty and ready to hit the air-conditioning of our own apartments.  Here we would count our candy.

3. Trick or Treating in Japan: Traditionally, the Japanese do not celebrate Halloween, but when a bunch of Japanese kids get word that candy will be given out to all people in costumes on the 31st of October, in a rural area called Chofu, they come in bus loads to partake in the fun.  With 15-20 degree temperatures, all costumes are permissible in Japan.  Kids do not run the risk of freezing or sweating, but they do run the risk of being stuck in a line to receive candy.  In true Japanese fashion, there was such a crowd, that most houses in our area had kids lined up at their doors.  One of our teachers put together a "haunted yard" and by 7:30 pm there were at least 200 Japanese kids waiting in line to get in!  Luckily, we had VIP passes!  With so many kids out and about, Halloween spirit was certainly in the air. The great thing was, that being a school night (the Japanese are very serious about school), everything shut down by 8:30, and soon there after, we were at home counting our candy.....which did not add up to much...with up to 2000 kids at some houses, people have to be a little "skimpy" on what they give out.

Swimming at ASIJ

Steve and I continue to be impressed with what the school has to offer the students beyond the classroom.  For the last 2 months, Tristan has been apart of the elementary B Swim Team.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, about 100 kids on the B Team would hit the water and practice their strokes under the tutelage of a high school student.  The 8 and unders would practice from 3:15-4:15 and the 9 and 10s would practice from 4:15-5:15.  On Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the A team, with the same number of kids, would also practice.  Saturdays were reserved for swim meets, with team B getting 3 competitions under their belts, and the A team 4.  We were not only impressed by the ONE coach's dedication, but the dedication of the high school students who were deck managers, lifeguards, and swim coaches.  The sense of community is really strong and it is so great to see the older students being role models for the younger students.  Now that elementary swim is over, the middle and high school swim team now begins.

Tristan had a great experience being apart of a team.  He was not too sure about wearing the swim cap and swimming jammers, but realized he had no choice, as this what the coach expected.  He became very conscious of eating well before and during a meet, and felt a sense of belonging to something bigger than himself.  By the end of the season he had improved his freestyle by 4 seconds.  At the team baquet, his high school coach gave a little speech about each participant.  I had to laugh at what she said about Tristan- he won the "Mr. Smiles award" and she said that "even though he struggled at times, he never gave up and did his best".  What more could a parent ask for!

A Cultural Antithesis

Prayers

While visiting the Meiji Jingu shrine on the weekend, we were struck by the cultural antithesis that exists in Japan.  On one side, you will find a reserved people;  people who do not look you in the eye when talking to you; people who follow a deep religious devotion and celebrate Japanese traditions; people who embrace kimonos, geisha, origami, tea ceremonies, and traditional music.   While visiting the shrine we witnessed traditional Japanese weddings, people offering their prayers to the divine spirits, and a sense of the reserved Japanese culture where emotion should not be expressed.


As we left the shrine grounds, we were met with the other side of Japan- a country of youth trying to break Japanese stereotypes.  Leaving the temple grounds, you will find yourself in an area called Harajuku where fashion takes on a whole new meaning.  Young Japanese dress in a variety of styles that make you take a double look- outlandish hairstyles, lots of make-up, and clothes that resemble a mix of goth, punk, and Lolita (imagine landing in the game "Candy Land").  Then, a little ways down the road, you find yourself in Yoyogi park where young Japanese budding artists perform- there is irony in this comment as there was little to no talent in the performances we saw- it was more of an artistic catharsis!